Claims against former Patriots star exaggerated, newspaper says

Rolling Stone’s opus on Aaron Hernandez and how he came to be charged with first-degree murder, published online Wednesday, asked and gave its answers to this question, directly from the story: "How did a kid so rich in gifts and honors — the most celebrated son in the history of Bristol (Conn.) — grow into such a murderously angry man?"

Much of the doubt centered not on the accounts of Hernandez's personal life, but in connection with the Patriots and the NFL.

The most obvious incorrect assertion the Globe found was that last spring, Hernandez "skipped out on team training drills, going to California to rehab an aching shoulder and take a much-needed break from New England.'' Calling that "flat-out wrong,'' the Globe story said that Hernandez attended the Patriots' offseason workouts during the NFL-prescribed period from April to June, and that his presence is at the core of the NFLPA's grievance to recover the $82,000 workout bonus the team is trying not to pay.

However, players are prohibited from working out with teams before that—Hernandez was in California, the paper reported, but not for any team-mandated function.

Also, the Globe cast doubt on Rolling Stone's assertion that coach Bill Belichick, prompted by news of police being called to Hernandez's rented house in California in March, had threatened to trade or cut him after the 2013 season if he crossed the line one more time. The team had just signed him to his $40 million extension the previous August, and even if it had stuck to a fairly toothless threat to cut ties with him a year later, it still would have cost them nearly $12 million in salary cap hits and bonuses.

The Globe also disputes the timeline of when Hernandez "cemented his don't-touch rep" as the 2010 draft approached – Rolling Stone singled out the 2007 bar room fight when he was a freshman at Florida, three seasons before the draft and long before the reported drug-test failures and other incidents that raised the real red flags for NFL teams.

Also described as overinflated and sensationalized were the magazine's claims that Belichick's new head of security, Mark Briggs, was partly responsible for the Patriots' inability to stay on top of Hernandez's behavior; and its account of how much marijuana Hernandez regularly consumed while driving home from games ("three or four blunts").

The Globe, however, found at least some credibility, albeit with some shock, in the report that Hernandez was a heavy user of the drug PCP, or angel dust, despite the NFL's recreational drug-testing program; that Belichick had advised Hernandez earlier this year to find a "safe house," and that Hernandez carried a gun at all times to protect himself.